A guy from Guardians Of The Galaxy is playing The Spectre on NBC’s Constantine

By Sam Barsanti | September 6, 2014 | 12:07am

Aux Features TV

Not content to let its cousins on The CW hog all of the good DC characters, NBC has announced that Irish actor Emmett Scanlan will be appearing on Constantine as Detective Jim Corrigan, the guy who will eventually become The Spectre. According to Entertainment Weekly, this version of Corrigan is “obsessed with justice,” and he “doesn’t let police procedure or red tape stop him from putting away the bad guys.” As comic book nerds will know, Corrigan takes on the role of God’s personal agent of vengeance once he becomes The Spectre. So, at the risk of spoiling his entire shtick, we’re going to assume that “putting away the bad guys” is a euphemism for “killing all of the bad guys.” Also, unless NBC makes some drastic changes to The Spectre’s design, look for Scanlan to spend a lot of time wearing a green cape, green underwear, and nothing else.

To American audiences, Scanlan is probably best known for being in Guardians Of The Galaxy as Head Riot Guard—a character who presumably has an impressively elaborate backstory in the comics—but he was also appeared in The Fall and 340 episodes of a British soap opera called Hollyoaks. To save us some time looking up what that is, we’re just going to assume he played another detective-turned-spirit-of-vengeance on that show. If that’s the case, and we have no reason to doubt that it is, this seems like a smart move.